With his unique musical talent, Elvis Costello has established himself in the stellar elite of lyrical rock music. With the first performance of his cycle of songs on Hans Christian Andersen’s deep infatuation with one of the greatest opera stars of his time, the Swedish nightingale Jenny Lind, Costello enters the world of opera for the very first time. Elvis Costello will perform the first performance of the songs at two concerts at the Copenhagen Opera House accompanied by some of his favourite musicians. In the 2006/07 season, the The Secret Songs will be staged as an opera by the Royal Danish Opera.

The Secret Songs have been sponsored by the Hans Christian Andersen 2005 Foundation, the Kingdom of Denmark, and the Bikuben Foundation.
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Elvis Costello will perform songs from his upcoming first opera "The Secret Songs" as well as familiar Costello classics at two concerts at the Copenhagen opera house, Operaen. The world premiere of the songs will take place on Saturday 8 October.

By Oliver Newton - H.C. Andersen 2005 - 30 September 2005

Elvis Costello breaks new ground with his first opera The Secret Songs, commissioned by the Royal Danish Opera. Costello is an investigative, multitalented and widely embracing artist, who has never been afraid of uncharted waters. His preoccupation throughout his career with genre experimentation has become his hallmark. He has performed rock, country, punk and jazz music and has most recently created the symphonic work Il Sogno - ballet music arranged for a full symphony orchestra based Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The Secret Songs is Costello's first attempt within the opera genre. This cycle of songs draws inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's infatuation with opera singer Jenny Lind, also knows as "The Swedish Nightingale". Elvis Costello will premiere these new songs in person at two concerts to be staged at the opera house Main Stage. The songs are to feature in his upcoming chamber opera, which will premiere during the 2006/2007 season at Takkelloftet at the opera house.

"The songs will tell a story that I have imagined existing between the lines of Andersen's biography and some of his most famous tales. They speak of a misfit's love for an unattainable woman and a struggle between a huckster and someone who composes music in secret." Elvis Costello

The two-part concerts will feature the concert premiere of The Secret Songs as well as performances of Costello's classics. Performing artist include Steve Nieve, Bebe Risenfors, Bent Clausen and Amit Sen as well as Swedish soprano Gisela Stille, who is soloist with the Royal Danish Opera Ensemble.

The Secret Songs has been sponsored by the Hans Christian Andersen 2005 Foundation.

Performances:
The Copenhagen Opera House, Operaen. Main Stage
World Premiere - 8 October 2005 at 8 pm
The concert will also be performed on 9 October at 3 pm

Tickets for the concerts at the Copenhagen opera:
The Royal Danish Theatre Box Office
August Bournonvilles Passage 1
1055 Copenhagen K
Opening hours:
Monday to Friday open for personal callers only between noon and 6 pm.

Wish I could go, but I don't have the time or the money right now. I'm not too saddened by missing it though because I'm not too keen on Vibrator-Elvis, of which I'm sure there'll be plenty this weekend. I'm still not fully over the loss of the Gothenburg-concert being cancelled early this year. If I know it would've been cancelled I would've gone to see him in Stockholm! Hope he shows up in Gothenburg only while stopping by in Sweden next time around ;).

Also, nice to see another swede on the forums. That makes three of us. Eventually there'll be enough of us to take over this joint!

Elvis Costello will take the stage in Copenhagen this weekend for the premiere of his opera The Secret Arias, which is based on Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen’s impossible romance with a Swedish soprano.

The opera tells of a three-way drama between Andersen, Jenny Lind – dubbed the Swedish Nightingale – and her American impresario, Phineas Taylor Barnum, who brought Lind to New York for her first American concert tour in 1850.

Costello will play both Andersen and Barnum, while Swedish soprano Gisela Stille will sing Lind’s part.

Costello said his work was a traditional opera.

“It would be a surprise if people thought I would be playing a lot of rock ’n’ roll,” he said at a news conference in Copenhagen.

“It is not inconceivable” to be a rock singer and write an opera, said Costello, who has also recorded with Swedish soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet.

Costello emerged from Britain’s early new wave scene as one of the original “angry young men” and since then has dabbled in everything from orchestral symphonies to harmonious pop. Some of his featured singles include Alison, Radio, Radio and Veronica.

The opera will be performed at Copenhagen’s new opera house on Saturday and Sunday. Next season, it will be on the opera house’s repertoire with other performers.

Contacted nearly three years ago by the Danish Royal Theater ahead of the 2005 bicentennial of Andersen’s birth, Costello wrote “the songs (which) will tell a story that I have imagined existing between the lines of Andersen’s biography and some of his most famous tales,” he told reporters.

“I didn’t want it to sound like a pastiche of Andersen,” Costello said. The opera eventually will go on an international tour and will be released on compact disc and DVD.Four musicians will accompany Costello and Stille at the opera’s main stage, which seats up to 1,700 people.

By picking Costello, “we wanted to show that we don’t want boxes at the opera. We thought the meeting between the two worlds would be interesting,” the opera’s artistic director, Kasper Holten, said.

This year, Danes mark the bicentennial of Andersen’s birth, who is renowned for his children’s stories, including the classics The Little Match Girl, The Ugly Duckling and The Red Shoes. Andersen died in 1875.

It is believed that Andersen wrote his tale The Nightingale with Lind – who lived from 1820-1887 – in mind.

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

Yup - it's almost the same. The songs are written from a thought up situation (from EC) where H. C. Andersen have written some songs to his great love Jenny Lind to be performed at a party.

And the ´Manager of the Opera, Kasper Holten, thinks that EC' has written some of the best songs in the world and he is as inventive as H. C. Andersen was. Kasper Holten also says that luckily he wasn't wrong in getting EC to do this - the songs have been a joy to recieve by mail.

This is really going to be a strange and different concert I must say - I like the safety net that he will play known songs as well.

Looking up some Jenny Lind references in a Hans Christian Andersen biography I was interested to see some specific dates -

On 7 October 1843, three weeks after Jenny left Copenhagen, Andersen noted in his almanac, ‘finished the tale of the young swan’. He had begun ‘The Ugly Duckling’ more than a year earlier; it was one of the tales on which he worked hardest and longest. As Soon as it was finished he threw himself into a new tale, which had been playing in his mind since he met Jenny. ‘In Tivoli, Carstensen’s evening. Began the Chinese tale,’ runs his almanac for 11 October. The Chinese tale was ‘The Nightingale’, inspired by Jenny Lind and given its setting by the Chinese themes, all pagodas and peacocks and coloured lanterns, of Copenhagen’s new pleasure garden, Tivoli, which was opened in the summer of 1843 by the entrepreneur Georg Carstensen. It was a magical place, full of crazy architecture and funfajr attractions, its lakes and flowers, theatres and restaurants, illuminated at night by gas lights and fireworks, and Andersen loved it. He worked on the tale in a frenzy, and within twenty-four hours it was complete: ‘finished the Chinese tale’ he notes on 12 October.

.......making this weekend an even more apt set of dates!
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When Elvis Costello was contacted three years ago by Denmark's Royal Theater asking him to write an opera about Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen, his first thought was "why didn't they choose a Danish composer?"

"Then I recalled that Andersen belongs to the world," Costello said.

On Saturday, his work "The Secret Arias" — based on Andersen's unrequited yearning for Swedish soprano Jenny Lind — will debut at Copenhagen's new waterfront opera house, with Costello himself playing two lead roles.

The opera is being performed in connection with the 2005 bicentennial of Andersen's birth. The writer, renowned for his children's classics such as "The Little Mermaid," "The Ugly Duckling" and "The Red Shoes," died in 1875.

For the musical chameleon Costello, it marks yet another expansion of his artistic range. After emerging from Britain's early new wave scene as one of the original "angry young men," he has dabbled in everything from orchestral symphonies to harmonious pop. He has recorded with Swedish soprano Anne Sofie Von Otter and the Brodsky Quartet, but this is the first time he has written an opera.

His story tells a three-way drama between Andersen, Jenny Lind — dubbed the "Swedish Nightingale" — and her American impresario, P.T. Barnum, who brought Lind to New York for her first American concert tour in 1850.

"The songs will tell a story that I have imagined existing between the lines of Andersen's biography and some of his most famous tales," Costello told reporters this week in Copenhagen. "They speak of a misfit's love for an unattainable woman and a struggle between a huckster and someone who composes music in secret."

It's widely believed that Andersen wrote his tale "The Nightingale" with Lind — who lived from 1820-1887 — in mind.

In the past week, Costello has been rehearsing with Swedish soprano Gisela Stille at the new opera house, which opened earlier this year. Costello will play both Andersen and Barnum, while Stille will portray Lind.

The duo will perform this weekend in Copenhagen and next week in Aarhus, Denmark's second largest city in the western part of the Scandinavian country. Next season, the Copenhagen Opera will stage a longer version of "The Secret Arias" with other performers.

Costello, revealing few details about his work, said it was a traditional opera, but with some exceptions.

"We will not have a symphonic orchestra," he told reporters. Instead, four musicians will accompany Costello and Stille at the opera's main stage, which can seat as many as 1,700 people.

Costello said he was inspired by Andersen's way of expression, adding that "many translations of (Andersen's) works miss the really good elements, the macabre, the weird and the social critique."

Many of Andersen's fairy tales are rather gruesome.

In "The Little Mermaid," one of his best known stories, the mermaid becomes mute after a witch cuts off her tongue in exchange for legs to replace her fish tail.

In "The Two Baronesses," Andersen writes about marital infidelity and life in a brothel — something he personally experienced when living in Copenhagen. "The Traveling Companion," published in 1835 as part of a fairy tale collection for children, is about death.

Kasper Holten, the Royal Theater's 32-year-old opera director, said asking Costello to write an opera was a way to bring a broader repertoire to the opera house, instead of merely focusing on the big classics.

The 2.5 billion kroner (€337 million; US$406 million) Opera House, donated by a Danish billionaire, opened Jan. 15 with a show featuring excerpts of Danish and foreign operas and ballets. The first public show — Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida" — kicked off Jan. 26.

On next spring's repertoire, the new stage will have Richard Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelungen," the four-opera marathon of gods, humans and dwarfs that draws on themes from Nordic and German mythology.

"We wanted to show that we don't want boxes at the opera. We thought the meeting between the two worlds would be interesting," Holten said.

John Mcconnico / APMusical chameleon Elvis Costello enters the opera stage with his own take on Denmark's beloved fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen. Far from a children's story, the show at Copenhagen's opera house tells a three-way drama between Andersen, Swedish soprano Jenny Lind and her American impresario, Phineas Taylor Barnum.

Musical chameleon Elvis Costello is seen Tuesday Oct. 4, 2005 at the new Opera House in Copenhagen, Denmark. Costello enters the opera stage with his own take on Denmark's beloved fairytale writer Hans Christian Andersen. Far from a children's story, the show at Copenhagen's opera house tells a three-way drama between Andersen, Swedish soprano Jenny Lind and her American impresario, Phineas Taylor Barnum. (AP Photo/John McConnico)

Curtain up as Costello applies his talent to a new ariaBy Jack Malvern, Arts Reporter

ELVIS COSTELLO made a name for himself with 1980s hits such as Oliver’s Army, but that has not stopped him turning his hand to ballet, classical music and even a small film role in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Now he is also attempting to make a name for himself as an operatic composer. Secret Arias, a biographical opera of Hans Christian Andersen’s doomed love for Jenny Lind, the Swedish soprano, will have its first semi-staged performance today at the Copenhagen Opera House.

He will perform as both the Danish fairytale writer and P. T. Barnum, the impresario who attempted to woo Andersen’s muse to America in the 1850s. The performance will give the public its first taste of a fully staged production, in which Costello will be replaced by classically trained opera singers, that will premiere in Copenhagen next year before transferring to Jutland. If successful, an international tour could follow.

Costello, 50, agreed to write the opera after he was approached by Henrik Engelbrecht, the head of dramaturgy at the Royal Danish Opera, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Andersen’s birth. Costello was already knowledgeable about the Danish author and jumped at the chance.

Costello delved into classical music when he collaborated with the Brodsky Quartet and Anne Sofie von Otter, the mezzo-soprano. He said: “It is a series of monologues. People don’t dress up, there are no children mistaken for one another and there are no Viking women in helmets.”

Since you put me down, it seems i've been very gloomy. You may laugh but pretty girls look right through me.

Having long thought the phrase "It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings" was more than a little sexist, we're happy to finally have a male rejoinder, thanks to the efforts of Elvis Costello. The pudgy guy is making his mark in the opera world this weekend, taking the stage in Copenhagen to play a pair of roles in The Secret Arias, a piece he's been working on for some time. Costello will be portraying both Hans Christian Andersen and P.T. Barnum in the reality-based tale of a love triangle centering on the charms of songbird Jenny Lind, who, it seems, was the Christina Aguilera of her time. We're hoping that for an encore, Costello fully embraces his new opera-man persona and pens an opera about a menage of sorts involving an Entenmann's cake and a mushroom pizza . . .

Elvis 'n co. delivered an entertaining show this Saturday evening. Not knock out awesome but not cringe inducing awful either. Elvis has addressed the remit he was given and , useing his strengths, done the best he can.

I'm going to wait until I've seen the show again tomorrow and Monday before I comment on the songs. For the moment I'l just tell you about other elements of Saturday's show.

Ten songs were performed . They were The Secret Songs - no 'performances of Costello's classics' . The songs were done in c.1 hour , 10 minutes. The encore was a reprise of three of the same songs. Without commenting specifically , this was a good move ; a batch of Costello classics would have diminished any impact of the new songs.

Elvis wore , initially , a black velvet coat as he made intro. comments before a red curtain. Along with thanks for the invite and the work put in by the musicians this past week he finished up , to a laugh from the packed auditorium, that none of the songs had ever been performed by Tina Turner ( Ms Turner had cost the Danish organisers a fortune in a concert earlier this year) .

The curtain rose to a instrument laden stage. Steve 'n his grand piano and other keyboard gear were to the left , the other musicians with various stringed and wind instruments to the right. In the middle was a kind of podium with a frontage decorated with the words King Of Humbug. To it's right was a old desk , decorated with quills and papers etc.

Besides Elvis the players wore black. Elvis had shed the coat . He now wore a black jacket , over a white shirt with a large ruffly scarf at the neck. It semi-covered a waist coat which was contrast cloured mint green and glittery purple. One side of the waistcoat dipped lower than the other - or else Elvis had got the buttons wrong.

Various cue cards were unveiled during the show to contexualise the songs . Images were back-projected to illustrate settings for some of the performances. The New York one struck me as a little odd . It was supposed to be 1850 N.Y. but we get to see what looks like the Empire State Building ( buillt 1930/1). Similarly a Liverpool image . We see what is supposed to be '1850 Liverpool' and can clearly see the Liver Building....built in 1911.

There's loads more I want to tell about this show but I really want to listen to it again before I do so. Soren and Charlotte were great companions during the show and Ulf joined us afterwards .

The programme bio. of Elvis had some great news - The North Sea Jazz Festival Show from 2004 is to be released by Deutshe Grammophon next year. We are also told about the musicians who will be backing Elvis in the non-orchestra part of the Il Sogno shows in '06. The will be Steve Nieve , Sy Johnson , Bill Frisell and Vince Mendoza.

More tomorrow!

Last edited by johnfoyle on Sun Oct 09, 2005 3:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

....and now this photo seems to show a blue jacket, and I remembered a black jacket - sorry about that! Last nights account was written as the band in my hotel bar were butchering Beatles classics....and I'd just had a few glasses of the local beverages.....you're lucky I wrote anything at all!

British singer Elvis Costello performs 08 October 2005 on stage in The Copenhagen Opera House with songs from his new opera "The Secret Arias". The songs are inspired by H. C. Andersen's facination with the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, called The Swedish Nightinggale, his biography and most famous tales. EPA/Kristian Brasen